Booting Alpine Linux on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module

By Maximilian Batz | 2019-07-07

In our project for a client we are using the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, along with a custom compute module carrier board (called the PCCB – Pi Control Carrier Board) which provides RS485, CAN, RS232, LAN, USB and a step-down for input voltages of 6 – 24 V. (If you are interested in customized hardware…

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Packaging Python projects for Debian / Raspbian with dh-virtualenv

By Maximilian Batz | 2019-04-19

This article aims to explain some things to developers which don’t use Python a lot, and might struggle with some of the concepts otherwise. I highly recommend the lecture of the following article as an introduction to the concepts discussed here: https://www.dabapps.com/blog/introduction-to-pip-and-virtualenv-python/ pypi.org pypi.org is an official repository of software for the Python programming language.…

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Alpine 3.9.0 initramfs init changes

By Maximilian Batz | 2019-02-02

Alpine 3.9.0 ships a new version of the init script in it’s initramfs. left: Alpine 3.9.0, right: Alpine 3.8.2 There are a number of interesting changes: better and earlier networking support for the boot process, with an additional kernel parameter for cmdline.txt: BOOTIF, allowing you to specify the device interface you want to use for…

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Debugging the Alpine boot process

By Maximilian Batz | 2019-01-22

As discussed in my previous post, Alpine Linux goes through several stages when it boots. Just after mounting the boot media, and scanning it for apkovl’s (with nlplug-findfs), there is an option for you to get a console, by setting $SINGLEMODE to yes. Setting SINGLEMODE to yes is easy, you simply add the word “single”…

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Alpine boot process on the Raspberry Pi

By Maximilian Batz | 2019-01-10

Today we will have a look at the Alpine Linux boot process on a Raspberry Pi in some detail. The picture shows the contents of a “virgin” SD card with the Alpine image, which has not been booted yet. This picture shows the contents of the boot folder. Initial boot Stages on the Raspberry Pi…

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nlplug-findfs documentation

By Maximilian Batz | 2019-01-09

nlplugfs-findfs usage: %s [options] DEVICE options: -a OUTFILE add paths to found apkovls to OUTFILE -b OUTFILE add found boot repositories to OUTFILE -c CRYPTDEVICE run cryptsetup luksOpen when CRYPTDEVICE is found -h show this help -H HEADERDEVICE use HEADERDEVICE as the LUKS header -k CRYPTKEY path to keyfile -m CRYPTNAME use CRYPTNAME name for…

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Crystal & Alpine on the Raspberry Pi

By Maximilian Batz | 2018-12-21

Bringing together two interesting technologies: Alpine Linux – a small-size and security oriented Linux distribution Crystal – a compiled language with a nice syntax (similar to Ruby) on the Raspberry Pi (armhf / ARMv6, which would also support the Pi Zero W) is not possible currently, as of 21.12.2018. There is no (at least no…

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Alpine Linux first steps

By Maximilian Batz | 2018-10-24

Here’s a short primer to Alpine Linux, specifically for the Raspberry Pi platform Why Alpine Linux? it’s small it can be installed by copying files on the FAT partition of the SD it can run from RAM, the filesystem will remain read-only (persisting changes is of course possible) this is very good for embedded systems…

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